Scholarship at UWindsor
Scholarship at UWindsor
Electronic Theses and Dissertations Theses, Dissertations, and Major Papers
1-1-2006
Male language arts teachers' narratives of practice: The teaching
Male language arts teachers' narratives of practice: The teaching
of boys.
of boys.
Beverley Hamilton University of Windsor
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Recommended Citation Recommended Citation
Hamilton, Beverley, "Male language arts teachers' narratives of practice: The teaching of boys." (2006). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 7098.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/7098
MALE LANGUAGE ARTS TEACHERS’ NARRATIVES OF PRACTICE: THE TEACHING OF BOYS
by
Beverley Hamilton
A Thesis
Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of M aster of Education at the University of Windsor
Windsor, Ontario, Canada
2006
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ABSTRACT
This thesis explores how gendered lived experience informs ten male teachers’
literacy pedagogy with boys. Consistently rooted in male experience, participants’ unique
histories and social positioning nuanced their roles, priorities and limits in working with
boys. In enacting the literacy curriculum, participants mediated between what they
understood boys to be like, and understandings of the mandated curriculum. Both were
informed by their gendered experience. School and societal gender arrangements both
enhanced and limited the resources that the teachers felt were available to them in
enacting curriculum and in forming relationships with boys. Experiences of the impact of
idealized notions of being male in boys’ lives shaped, firstly, efforts to tailor school
environments to suit boys, and secondly, efforts to encourage boys to engage with more
I would like to acknowledge the generosity of the Greater Essex County District
School Board and the Windsor Essex Catholic District School Board in allowing me to
work with their teachers on this project. I am indebted to my participants, whose
willingness to take time out of their very busy lives to offer insights into the ways in
which men work with boys in schools was unfailing. I am grateful for their willingness
to reflect and for the truths they shared. Thanks also to the men with whom I have taught
over the years, who were the initial inspiration for the project, and to my son, whose
journey through school has been illuminating for me. Thanks most of all to S. Nombuso
Dlamini, whose patience and high standards as this project went through its “process”, as
she continued to call it even at its most unprocess-like, were both comforting and
inspiring. And finally, thank you to the members of my committee, for their wisdom,
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT...iii
ACKNOW LEDGEMENTS...iv
C H A PT E R I. IN TR O D U C TIO N II. R E V IE W O F L IT E R A T U R E Review of Literature and Theoretical Framework... 7
Research Questions... 32
Definition of T erm s... 32
III. D ESIG N AND M E TH O D O LO G Y Design and Procedure...35
Participants... 39
V alidity...42
Participant Sum m ary...44
Observations from Interviews...45
Conclusion... 48
IV. ANALYSIS O F RESU LTS Introduction... 49
4.1. Narratives of Boyhood and Belonging in the Work o f Male T eachers...51
4.2. Narratives of Personal Transformation in the Work of Male T eachers...79
4.3. Capture and Evasion: Narratives of Conditional Literacy 111 4.4. Male Teachers’ Narratives of Engaging Boys With Literacy ...138
V. C O NCLUSIO N S AND R EC O M M EN D A TIO N S Conclusions... 173
Im plications... 180
A PPEN D IC ES A. Letter of Permission to School B oards... 188
B. Letters of Consent and Information for Participants...191
C. Letter of Information to Principals... 197
G. Participants’ Profiles... 207
H. Conceptual O verview ... 213
I. D ave’s Story...214
J. E d’s Story... 217
REFERENCES... 220
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
As a classroom teacher, it often appeared to me that students responded better
either to female teachers, as women, or to male teachers, as men. Response patterns did
not divide along rigid gender lines, though often boys did respond more positively to
their male teachers. Male teachers seemed different from female teachers, in ways
couldn’t be easily or obviously borrowed. This difference was more than a question of
increasing the number of books about cars on my bookshelf, or of following the hockey
standings more assiduously. The men with whom I taught operated through a repertoire
of what appeared to be gender-specific practices which were qualitatively different from
my own. These practices had both benefits and drawbacks, but, like my own, they were
not entirely consciously chosen: they emerged from the teachers’ historically situated,
gendered experiences and narratives.
Over the past decade, I have also become increasingly aware of the ways in which
public discourses around teaching, as well as a range of policy initiatives internationally,
are informed by notions that elementary schools need male teachers, particularly, to work
with boys. Advocates for male teacher recruitment argue that male teachers are needed
to respond to “feminized” school environments, to offer academically engaged role
models for boys, to regulate boys’ behaviours, and to act as advocates for boys’ needs in
schools (See, for example, Bradley, 2004; Byfield, 2005; Gurian, 2004; Higgins, 2002;
Mitchell, 2004; Sommers, 2001). As a female teacher, I resist the notion that I am in
some way harming boys simply by my presence. I also know that male teachers are no
more homogenous than anyone else, and that their practices and presence in schools
who respond to something in their male teachers for good or ill, and I have come to think
that we need a more subtle and nuanced understanding of how gender informs teachers’
practices in school settings.
Personal Reflections: Initial Groundwork
I taught for a number of years across the hall from a male Language Arts teacher.
His teaching practice appeared to me to involve a more product-based technical
approach, in which he focused more on writing techniques and the use of models, rather
than on personal expression or self-reflection. Year after year, I believed, the work in my
room emerged for better or worse out of negotiation and self-exploration, while the work
in his classroom appeared more public, and, I was sure at the time, less personally
meaningful. Two facts were certain, though: firstly, the kids, and especially many of the
boys, loved his class, and cranked out satires, parodies, adventure and science fiction
stories, crime novels, and every possible kind of video project; and secondly, certain kids
flourished in his classroom who hadn’t in mine, and vice versa. W hat happens behind
our own classroom doors is really a secret, a private negotiation between the individual
teacher and his students. Therefore, I could only speculate based on the visible
pedagogical activities he engaged in.
Being a man appeared to play a role in my male colleague’s teaching style.
Twenty-five years ago, before he settled down and became a teacher, he raced cars
professionally. He used this professional knowledge of cars in his classroom, and drew
on it, as well, to write and publish young adult novels about car racing. He ran a soap
box derby club every year. He coached the co-educational flag football team at every
3
masterful video editor and an enthusiastic technologist. The diverse experiences and
enthusiasms he possessed played key roles in the way that he negotiated the school
environment.
Sometimes I felt that his football program was unnecessarily disruptive and that it
excluded certain students, but his position was that it drew kids in, especially boys, who
often weren’t easy to connect with in a Language Arts classroom. Often, some of these
same kids, almost invariably boys, became his technology squad, acting as audio
technicians, video recorders, computer fixers, and carriers of heavy things. I objected to
this gender discrimination, and consciously worked to balance it in my own practice, but
I simultaneously acknowledged the effectiveness of his choices in helping many at-risk
boys to stay connected, and in reducing the overall level of aggression and cynicism in
that middle school.
Despite the football and the car-racing, though, this teacher was not in any way
hyper-masculine, and he didn’t promote what British documents on boys’ literacy issues
describe evocatively as “macho values” in his classroom or in other school roles (Office
for Standards in Education (OFSTED), 2003). His vision of maleness seemed to have
more to do with fatherhood, independence, and honor, rather than aggression, one-
upmanship or dominance. Still, sometimes students in his classroom, often, but not
always girls, felt patronized or disenfranchised.
A Preliminary Narrative
In an effort to verify and expand upon these initial reflections, I embarked on an
electronic dialogue with this teacher about his sense of mission, his practice of teaching,
Men, and Women were Glad. He meant it humorously, of course, but even this initial
joke suggested intriguing possibilities about the way he perceives the role and
experiences of male Language Arts teachers. For example, conflict, a “full-contact”
interaction, appears to play a central role in the way he constructs male teaching practice
as distinct from female teaching. Another point of view suggested by this teacher’s
suggested title is that something fundamentally male in teaching has been under attack.
Given this description, I wondered if there were practices that had been more common in
the past, when “men were men” that he felt had been lost. Finally, his suggested title
seemed to imply that he believed that performance of this masculine “full contact”
teaching is viewed by women as in some way complementary to their own practice. As I
began to develop this study, a number of male teachers in my university classes, for
example, mentioned that students who had been identified as behaviorally difficult were
routinely placed in their classrooms because these students ‘needed a man’s presence.’ If
this is truly the case, in what ways might it appear to my former colleague that female
teachers were “glad” to exploit traditional male roles to support their own practice, even
while denigrating its deleterious effects on nurturing classroom environments?
My colleague’s further description of teaching boys supported the notion that, for
him, teaching literacy to boys does involve conflict. He described a struggle between
different visions of what men should be. If you push boys, he argued, they will “discover
that they do possess literary abilities an d.. .discover an intellectual work ethic.” In
literary ability, do not have an intellectual work ethic. They risk becoming “men without
responsive - and responsible— ideas.”
If asked to talk about my practice around boys, there are words and ideas in my
colleague’s reflection that I, as a female, might have been more hesitant to use. I might
have been more tentative in asserting any role in bringing boys to manhood, less
outspoken about “deliberate male stupidity.” Moreover, in our history together, there
were often words whose meaning we constructed differently, such as justice, helpfulness,
and protection. In our dialogue, for example, my colleague took exception to my use of
the term “paternalistic,” arguing that his role was one of “surrogate brothering.” The role
of the female outsider in examining men’s talk around teaching has both strengths and
drawbacks: our socially and historically constructed gender positions fundamentally
shape how we perceive and understand others’ practice as well as our own.
The words excerpted above are just one m an’s voice. They suggest one man’s
unique construction of the ethics and practice of being a man in a school, of teaching
literacy to boys, and of the way that boys’ literacy development unfolds. People’s unique
constructions of gender, the gendered narrative they tell themselves and others about their
life, experiences, and values, play a role in how they conduct themselves. This gendered
narrative informs how they understand, and sometimes, do not understand, what they are
doing, how they choose what to do and what to notice, in each moment of their teaching
practice. The specific values and practices described by this male teacher may not
emerge in the narratives of other male teachers, but the narratives they tell about their
This thesis is an attempt to capture the voices and narratives of male teachers as a
component of coming to understand how, both individually and generally, being male
might inform the teaching of boys. Specifically, I examine how ten male elementary
school teachers perceive being male to inform the way they teach and work with boys.
Further, I examine how these teachers experienced literacy as boys, and explore the
influence of these experiences on their literacy teaching. In the first section of my
analysis, I examine male teachers’ own perceptions of how being male offers advantages
in working with boys. I then explore ways in which these teachers’ stories of the
challenge of belonging within a valued world of boys inform how they work with boys in
schools. In the second section, I consider participants’ experiences that prompted shifts
in their visions of valued ways of being men in society, and consider how these
experiences inform the teachers’ attempts to engage in transformative practice with boys
in schools. In the third section, I examine patterns in participants’ own literacy histories.
In the final section of the analysis, I demonstrate how the participants’ literacy strategies
with boys mediate between their understanding of boys, as informed by their lived
experience, and their understanding of the mandated curriculum, also informed by their
7
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Review of Literature and Theoretical Framework
The Context: Debates about the Need for More Male Teachers in Schools
In the past 15 years, considerable statistical evidence of a widening gap in boys'
and girls' scores on literacy assessments has emerged. Internationally and at home, media
reports and mainstream authors have drawn attention to ‘boys’ underachievement,’
suggesting neurological, socio-cultural, pedagogical and institutional sources for this
apparent crisis (Gorard, Rees, & Salisbury, 1999; Gurian, 1996; Gurian & Ballew, 2003;
Hunsader, 2002; Kindlon & Thompson, 2000; Pollock,1998; Sokoloff, 2004).
Mainstream writers have argued that the culture of elementary schools is
feminized, resulting in othering and distancing for boys in the school system (Biddulph,
1997; Faludi, 1999; Sommers, 2001). They advocate for more sympathy for boys’ needs
and practices within schools and other child-related environments. This view is clearly
articulated in the argument offered by one proponent of the British mythopoetic “Lads’
Movement”: “School is a terrible place for boys. In school they are trapped by ‘The
M atriarchy’ and are dominated by women who cannot accept boys as they are. The
women mainly wish to control and to suppress boys” (quoted in Epstein, Elwood, Hey, &
Maw, 1998, p. 7). Advocates of recuperative masculinity connect issues of aggression,
violence, and loss of mission in men and boys with the idea that the innate needs of males
are no longer being met in modern society (Biddulph, 1995, 1997; Bly, 1991; Farrell,
The idea of recruiting more men to work in schools is one with considerable
appeal in the teaching profession. This idea is exemplified internationally by a number of
policy documents and programs (Teacher Training Agency, 2003; Ontario College of
Teachers, 2004; Ontario Ministry of Education, 2005; Queensland Government, 2002).
Arguments advocating increased male presence also inform demands for more designated
masculine curriculum, increased use of literature focusing on masculine topics, and
increased focus on competition and aggressive play and sport in school. Little empirical
evidence supports this premise, and a number of critics have questioned the underlying
philosophy and validity of these policies (Allan, 1993; Lawson, Penfield, & Nagy, 1999;
Martino & Berrill, 2003; Mills, Martino & Lingard, 2004; Sokal & Katz, 2004; Yates,
2000). They argue that such essentializing approaches homogenize boys’ masculinities
and perpetuate inequitable gender practices. Critics also note the implication that women
are to blame for the problems of boys, which assumes a level of female control over
public discourse not fully borne out by facts (Skelton, 2002b).
Critics also question the premise of statistical differences between boys’ and girls’
achievement in schools all together. Some argue that boys, as a collective group, are not
threatened within the educational system. While specific subgroups of the boy
population, who are culturally, politically and economically marginalized already,
experience real disadvantage within schools, middle-class boys, most focused on by
mainstream literature, do not represent a threatened group (Yates, 2000). Furthermore,
Rowe (2000) notes that gender differences are insignificant in comparison to other
variables in Australian student achievement data. Supporting Rowe, Weaver-Hightower
9
employment achievement of female and male graduates of school systems tell a much
more complex and difficult story. A study of Australian high school leaving results
conducted by Teese, Davies, Charlton & Polesel (cited Yates, 2000), for example,
demonstrated that gender differences in course selection related to broader levels of
failure among boys and lower levels of rewards and outcomes among high-ability girls, a
premise also put forward by Kimmel (1999). On its own, statistical evidence cannot
provide a complete, or even necessarily illuminating, picture of boys’ experiences in
schools.
The complex issues surrounding how gender affects student learning need
examination through more detailed qualitative studies. Similarly, the presence of male
teachers in schools, and their practices and interactions with students and curricula,
cannot be fully elucidated through quantitative examination of test scores. If teacher
gender is a significant issue in students’ experience o f the curriculum, it is the individual
performance of gender within the gender arrangements of society and the school that may
have implications for practice (Ashley, 2003; Martino & Frank, 2006; Skelton, 2002b,
2003).
Understanding the Importance of Personal Histories: Habitus and Regimes of Truth
A framework that explains the importance of personal history is offered by
Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus. Bourdieu (1990) describes habitus as:
A producer of history, [which] produces individual and collective practices - more history— in accordance with the schemes generated by history. It ensures the active presence of past experiences which,
The habitus tends to generate all the ‘reasonable’ and ‘common sense’ behaviours which
are possible within the boundaries it shapes, and only those, providing us with a sense of
freedom of action within limits of which we are largely unaware. According to Bourdieu,
‘embodied history’ - so internalized as to be forgotten as history - structures all of our
new experiences. New experiences may modify previously developed structures, but
generally only within the limits defined by the habitus’ powers of selection.
Habitus is generally self-perpetuating, and deeply powerful, in part because of its
submerged nature. Excavation of the narratives of individuals’ past history may provide
insights not only through the content of the stories, but also through careful attention to
the contradictions, evasions, and lapses implied in the narrative. These also delineate the
shape that habitus inhabits.
According to Bourdieu (2001) habitus represents a framework of gendered
resources through which individuals make sense of their world. He argues:
Although the world always presents itself strewn with indices and signs designating things to do or not to do, intimating the actions and
movements that are possible, probable, or impossible, the ‘things to do’ and ‘the things forthcoming’ that are offered by a henceforward socially and economically differentiated universe are not addressed to an
indifferent agent, a kind of interchangeable x, but are specified according to the positions and dispositions of each agent. They present themselves as things to be done or things that are not feasible, things that are natural or unthinkable, normal or extraordinary for a given category, i.e. in particular for a man or a woman (and of a given social position)....They are inscribed in the physiognomy of the familiar environment, in the form of the public, masculine, universe and private, female worlds, between the public space ...and the house, (p. 57)
Through this framework, I was able to analyze how gender is normalized, and how the
individual’s male historical experiences inform his practices in a classroom. As well, by
11
analyze how participants in the study have “naturalized” certain male-based practices as
teachers of boys.
Foucault (1985) argues that the construction of categories of what is natural,
unthinkable, normal or extraordinary in a given environment or for a given event is
socially constructed through “regimes of truth.” His study of the history of truth
examines the interplay of power, knowledge, and subject in order to ask not what is true,
but how a given truth, at a given time, place and context, comes to be constructed.
Foucault (1985) defined truth as “something that can and must be thought” (p. 7). He
examined practices and techniques for the production of truth (techniques of discourse),
for the shaping of individuals willing to be subject to a given truth and to participate in
that truth (subjectivation or techniques of s e lf), and for the identification and separation
of “truth” from “falsehood” (techniques of government). These techniques enable and
delimit the ways that truth can be produced, circulated, transformed and used. Like all
social institutions, education exercises these techniques in order to constitute and
legitimate the truths to which students and teachers are subject.
The theories of habitus and regimes of truth examined here form the basis for this
study, in that they articulate a theory of the way that individuals absorb and reproduce
social hierarchies and gender arrangements, even if they may sometimes consciously
position themselves in resistance to them. For the teacher, intersecting discourses of
constructed truths of gender and the constructed truths o f the role of the teacher as
inculcator of discourse may shape distinctive patterns, practices and narratives for the
Understandings of Gender Differentiation
The framework for defining what is meant by the term gender draws on Butler’s
notion of gender as performative (1990) and Connell’s notion of gender as socially
embodied and relationally enacted (1995, 2000, 2002). However, biological and sex role
theories, as well as social construction models of gender and gender development, are
extant and sometimes intermingled in school teachers’ and policy analysts’ talk about
gender (Skelton, 2002b. See also Mills, Martino & Lingard, 2004; Martino & Berrill,
2003; Skelton, 2001). Consequently, an understanding of how gender is constructed and
negotiated in schools must take account of these notions which also dictate teachers’
practices. Connell (2002) and Gilbert and Gilbert (1998) provide overviews of the
historical but still influential views that root gender in biological, neurological, hormonal
and evolutionary differences. These claims remain common in pedagogical literature, but
Gilbert and Gilbert (1998) demonstrate that such “scientific” evidence often rests on
“unwarranted generalization and gross oversimplification” (p. 39).
In the late 1970’s and 1980’s, sex role theory emerged as an explication for how
gender differences emerge in boys and girls. Sex role theory argues that children learn
how to relate to the world in appropriately gendered ways through observing and
mimicking same sex models in their environments and in popular culture. Appropriate
performance would be reinforced by rewards and sanctions of their behaviour by others
(See Skelton, 2001, and Connell, 2002, for a fuller historical account).
This theory emphasized the social rather than the more traditionally evoked
biological origins of gender difference, thus offering the possibility of social change.
13
normative way of practicing gender despite the rich evidence of multiple patterns of
masculinity and femininity that co-exist in all social settings. Davies (2003) and Martino
and Pallotta-Chiarolli (2003) argue that sex role theory positions the gender learner as
passive despite the obvious evidence that young people practice gender in resistant,
transformative, alternative and experimental ways.
In Connell’s (2002) model of socially embodied gender, bodies as agents in social
practice are involved in the construction of the social world. In these terms, the bodily
structures and processes of human reproduction that constitute gender “do not constitute a
‘biological base,’ a natural mechanism that has social effects. Rather they constitute an
arena, a bodily site where something social happens. Among the things that can happen is
the creation of the cultural categories ‘woman’ and ‘man’”(p.48 ). Gender is not,
however, the passive impression of social structures upon the body because, like Butler
(1990), Connell argues that “[t]he structure of gender relations has no existence outside
the practices through which people and groups conduct these relations. Structures do not
continue...unless they are reconstituted from moment to moment in social action” (p. 55).
Connell views the physical body as the locus to be worked upon by social structures as
well as the enactor of social structures. In this way, although gender is constructed
through and inseparable from the body, it is not biologically dictated by the body.
Connell (2002) notes that in organizations, there are invariably regular patterns or
gender arrangements: who does what work, how social interactions are organized, and
how emotional relations are conducted. Connell refers to this as the “gender regime” of
an institution (p. 52). Gender regimes within organizations can change, but such change
ambiguously, within institutional gender arrangements can often result in disapproval,
loss of status, ostracism, and even violence (Connell, 2002; Davies, 2003; Mills, 2000;
Martino & Palloto-Chiarolli, 2003).
Theories of Masculinity
Writers exploring masculinity often associate it with dominance. Long (1994)
notes that masculinity can be seen as
a performance of dominance... [that] pervade[s] language systems, physical kinesics, and proxemics, psychoanalytic structures, and symbol categories. The ways in which men speak, move, express desire, and construct symbols become dramatic performances that, due to the process of naturalization... are often outside the realm of social and political discourse, (p. 71)
Socially, McClean (1996) sees men as competitive, willing to sacrifice personal life for
achievement, and as typically creating camaraderie through competitive ritual and
experiences of conquest. Thus, masculine power comes at a price of alienation,
emotional dependence, and distance (see also Kaufmann, 1994). McClean (1996)
describes numbing or at least withholding of emotion as a key component of masculine
identity and masculine power. Smith (1996) associates the withholding of emotion with
the value placed on control. Smith also identifies dichotomies characteristic of m en’s
mindset in which rationality, universalism, separateness, and individualism are associated
with masculinity. Failure to live up to standards is interpreted as inadequacy, rather than
development.
Gender hierarchies exist as a system of power not only between men and women,
but also within groups of individuals sharing the same gender. While men enjoy the
privilege of their gender, these privileges are not equally apportioned: gendered identity
relations among masculinities: hegemonic, subordinate, complicit, and marginal. The
nature of each of these masculinities, and membership in each category, is fluid and may
change over time: it is the relationship between them that constitutes a pattern of gender
relations.
Hegemonic Masculinities
Hegemonic masculinity refers to a set of gender practices currently legitimizing
patriarchy, which guarantees the subordination of women through its ideology and
practices (Connell, 1995, p. 77). Dominant, or hegemonic, masculinity is not of fixed
character: it is merely the masculinity occupying the dominant position in a society at a
given time and place (Connell, 1995). It is not synonymous with power and wealth:
individuals may hold or represent institutional or financial power while not practicing
hegemonic patterns in their personal lives, and the most obvious bearers of hegemonic
masculinity may not, necessarily, be the most powerful members of their society.
Subordinate Masculinities
Subordinate masculinities include all performances of masculinity that are
actively repressed or expelled from what hegemonic masculinity deems to be legitimate.
Homosexual masculinities are a principal example, but heterosexual men and boys may
also be excluded from hegemonic masculinity. Connell (1995) remarks that subordinate
masculinities generally act as a psychological repository for whatever is symbolically
expelled from hegemonic masculinity. It is for this reason that excluded individuals are
likely to be verbally associated with femininity as a mark of subordination. Ascribing
femininity, or specific forms of subordinate masculinity such as homosexuality, to
general submission to the principles of hegemonic masculinity (Francis & Skelton, 2001;
Davies, 1997; 2003; Gallas 1998; Martino, 2000; Martino & Frank, 2006).
Complicit Masculinities
Although hegemonic masculinity is articulated as a normative way of being male,
few men can live up to the standards involved: the number of men who actively and
explicitly practice hegemonic masculinity may be small (Connell, 1995). But the
majority of men enjoy what Connell terms the “patriarchal dividend,” since they benefit
from privilege accrued mainly through the subordination of women. Connell describes
men who in their day-to-day lives are not in any way violent, who do not actively seek to
dominate women, and who live peaceful domestic existences as complicitly masculine.
That is, though they are not active oppressors, they do not work towards identifying or
redressing gender-based oppression in their day-to-day lives.
Marginalized Masculinities
Intersections of gender, race and class produce what Connell (1995) describes as
marginalized masculinities. He argues that dominant classes project the violence existing
within all forms of oppression upon the marginalized group, and thus displace certain
aspects of violence and sexual profligacy upon marginalized groups of men, resulting in
increased surveillance and oppression of those groups. Individuals from within a
marginalized group may be, as Connell terms it, authorized by hegemonic masculinity,
but the authorization of such individuals will have no effect on the authority of the group
17
Protest Masculinities
Connell (1995, 2000) also identifies what he describes as protest masculinities,
typically among adolescents and young men. This particular form of masculine identity
is shaped in response and resistance to institutional and cultural disciplines, and is
articulated as a deep investment in symbols such as toughness and confrontation. The
resistance practices involved in this masculinity are not brought on by the ‘raging
hormones’ so often referred to in mainstream culture, but by a structure of masculinity in
which rule-breaking, violence, and sexual harassment result in the acquisition of prestige.
Rule breaking “becomes central to the making of masculinity when boys lack other
resources for gaining these ends” (Connell, 2000, p. 163). Connell notes that other
constructions of masculinity are on offer at schools, but that the exclusionary and
privileging practices of educational institutions may result in some boys having little
access to these offers. Protest masculinities offer a way to redress what those boys see as
the injustice of their situation.
Connell’s theoretical model of multiple masculinities enables us to envision a
constellation of masculinities co-existing within a classroom. Masculine hierarchies as
experienced by men in their own boyhoods may play a role in the ways that they
construct and police norms within their own classroom environments, or in the ways that
they understand what will motivate or threaten boys in their classrooms. Personal
experience of these hierarchies may shape, for teachers, what it is to be a man, and how it
is that a boy can become a man. This, in turn, may shape the possible options available
for them in the practice of literacy instruction. It is important to keep in mind Connell’s
individual’s socio-cultural context is an important aspect of how the individual positions
and performs gender (See also Mac an Ghaill, 1994).
Gendered Pedagogy In Feminist Theory
Differences between masculine and feminine teaching practice, central to the
conceptualizing of this study, have been theorized in feminist research. To begin, many
feminist researchers identify the ways that the female elementary teacher’s identity has
been shaped as a maternal practice of nurture (Dubose Brunner, 1994; Gillligan, 1979;
Grumet, 1988; Jipson, 1995; Lyons, 1990; Noddings, 1988; Walkerdine, 1987).
Feminist research has delineated the ways in which the trope of teacher as
nurturer functions to constrain and contain the practice of female teachers. Grumet
(1988) argued that teachers act as agents who deliver their children to the patriarchy.
They may wield power through relationship within the public/private sphere of the
classroom, but they submit to a patriarchal hierarchy, curriculum, and system of
education in the larger sphere of public discourse. Other researchers identify the practice
of teaching as mothering as a way of controlling teachers; that is, if the goal of the
teacher is to know and have a personal relationship with each of the children in her care,
then failure to do so must be individually shouldered. Systemic problems are therefore
portrayed as a personal failure of nurturance, rather than a locus for social action (Simola,
Heikkinen, & Silvonen, 1998). In this way, the construct of teacher/mother acts as a
gender specific moral and emotional force that shapes women’s teaching practice in
specific ways, either in agreement with or in resistance to it.
If feminine pedagogy centers around ideas of nurturance, masculine pedagogy, in
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justice, individualism and the rule of law (King, 1998). Upper elementary and secondary
teaching may also typically be associated with a more distant and professional approach
to student interaction, where emotion is considered an intrusion in the classroom
(Hargreaves, 2000). This aligns neatly with the views of secondary school as,
traditionally, a more male dominated culture (Davies, 1992; Francis & Skelton, 2001;
Mac an Ghaill, 1994; Connell, 2000; Lesko, 2000), characterized by masculinized traits
of rationalism and detachment (Davies, 1992).
Some studies connect the feminine in schools with the internal, and the masculine
in schools with the external. In her examination of one female pre-service teacher’s
perceptions of masculinity in schools, Sanford (2002) demonstrates that the participant
perceives her work as secret, invisible and internal, while she characterizes the work of
the male pre-service teacher, across the hall, as “going outside”, exciting, and visible.
Davies (2003) identifies a similar gender arrangement in children’s writing and
organization of familial roles, where women are constructed as existing on the inside,
while males occupy the space on the outside. This pattern also emerges in Thom e’s
(1993) ethnographic work on children, where the area directly surrounding the school is
occupied by the girls, while the boys occupy the outer space (see, also, Davies, 2003).
The trope of private and public discourse around teaching is more generally considered in
Clandinin and Connelly’s work on the secret, as opposed to the cover, stories of teachers
(Clandinin, 1987; Clandinin & Connelly, 1996; Connelly & Clandinin 1994).
Feminist research provides a useful basis for considering the ways that gender
may distinctively inform the personal and practical knowledge of teachers (Clandinin,
cast men as what Yates (2000) refers to as “a more shadowy other”(p. 3 1 7 ), it provides
only a pathway for the possibility of examining how male teachers perceive and
experience their own practice as men. The construction of teaching in which women play
the internal role while men play primarily external, administrative and managerial roles
does not provide a sufficient model for a study of men’s practice and experience in
classrooms. For example, if teacher-mother can be seen as a gender specific ethical
construction of self, what comparable masculine constructions subjectivize male
teachers? Research indicates that a comparable father/teacher construct exists (Sargent,
2001), but other male ethical constructions may also present themselves, given the
powerful private and public gender dialectic at work. The literature on women’s teaching
emphasizes a secret, internal and invisible side: if men’s teaching appears to lack that
component, is that because men’s practice is qualitatively different, or because, like
women’s own practice, it is invisible to outsiders?
Studies of Male Teaching Practice
My research builds on a number of studies that have directly examined male
teachers’ perceptions, experiences and classroom practices. These studies include
examinations of m ales’ experiences within largely female teaching environments such as
primary and elementary settings, studies of male teachers as re-enforcers of masculine
hegemony, and a small number of studies of alternative male discourses within
classrooms. These studies work along a continuum of analysis with some emphasizing
men’s practice as a product of larger gender arrangements within schools while others
focus on the outcomes of such practices in terms of the reproduction of hegemonic
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Studies Exploring Male Teachers ’ Interactions with Gendered Expectations in Schools
Using semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and, in the case of King, written
responses, Allan (1993), King (1998) and Sargent (2001) interviewed small groups of
male elementary school teachers, regarding their perceptions of being male teachers.
Sumison (1999) also provides a narrative account of the experiences of one early
childhood worker. These studies share a number of findings regarding gendered labour
division, which include contradictions in m en’s professional positions in schools and
heightened surveillance and constriction of m en’s interactions with children. Allan
describes his participants’ situation in elementary schools as one of “simultaneous
advantage and disadvantage within the gendered structure of power in elementary
schools” (p. 121).
Men in these studies noted that, fairly consistently, they were valued in schools as
male presence or role models, particularly for boys. Male teachers were frequently called
upon to take on authoritative roles, regardless of their comfort with this role or their level
of experience, and often were given students with disciplinary problems on the
unexamined basis that these students needed a male presence, by which someone with
greater authority appeared to be implied. Participants also noted that they were often
expected to take on roles ranging from technology expert to furniture mover, and to act as
a representative voice when other teachers wanted the “male perspective.” However,
teachers in Sumison (1999) and King (1998) also spoke directly of their choice to become
primary or early years teachers as a choice to subvert traditional patriarchal labour
Men in all of these studies consistently cited heightened surveillance of their
practice around touch and physical closeness, as well as questioning of their ability to
manage and assist with emotional issues and interpersonal dynamics in the classroom.
Often they were troubled by constructions of men as predatory and unfeeling, which they
felt did not reflect their practice as male elementary teachers.
Participants described a repertoire of physical and verbal rituals intended to
replace the freer contact and physical closeness with students that they perceived as
available only to female teachers. These included high fives, complex ritual handshakes,
elaborate nicknaming processes, and other non-tactile physical performances, like chalk-
throwing, elaborate facial gestures, and so on (See also Francis and Skelton (2001) and
Skelton (2002)). Men in King’s (1998) study associated these practices specifically with
externally imposed constraints on the kinds of intimacy available to male, as opposed to
female, practitioners because o f social surveillance.
In the context of the school, male teachers in these studies reported heightened
consciousness of their masculinity and masculine roles, even if, in caring for children,
they acted in ways considered to be more typically feminine. However, outside of
schools, male elementary teachers experienced questioning of their masculinity, where
the choice to become an elementary teacher was sometimes perceived as not typically
masculine. Teachers in Allan (1993) spoke of the importance of masculine identifiers,
such as coaching, as methods of bolstering masculinity
Two studies of women’s views of male teachers, Jones (2003) and Johanesson
(2004), indicate that the British and Icelandic teachers who were interviewed expressed
2 3
emerged from Jones’ participants was that only the “right kind of man” would be a
desirable addition to the early years school environment. While men were perceived to
be motivational to boys, such a man should be both traditionally masculine (“macho - not
a wimp”, p. 571), and also a good listener, a team player, someone who supports a
holistic approach and who really wants to teach the young child.
These findings make it clear that men in schools are subject to gender surveillance
which encourages and rewards the practice of certain versions of masculinity, while
proscribing others. Martino and Frank’s (2006) study of male teachers in a single sex
high school demonstrated pressures to conform to specific versions of masculinity from
male students. The male teachers’ social relations with boys were underpinned by a
sense of anxiety about the students’ judgment of the teacher’s masculinity. Participants
in Martino and Frank questioned the legitimacy of these constraints, but felt that flouting
them would have negative consequences for their ability to manage boys’ behaviours.
This indicates that m en’s practices within schools are not unilateral, but are also shaped
by interaction with patterns within schools.
Studies O f Hegemonic Practices In Male Teachers
Feminist observers of male teachers have reported a range of masculine practices
that reproduce hegemonic male power structures. Skelton (2002) studied the role of
football in one elementary school. Football talk and activity were intended to build
connections and improve learning for boys, but Skelton demonstrated that they also often
excluded girls and non-athletic boys. Francis and Skelton (2001) identified homophobic
male bonding and as ways that these teachers constructed themselves as superior to their
female students and more powerfully masculine than their male students.
Letts’ (2001) and Chapman’s (2001) discourse analyses of male teachers’ verbal
interaction demonstrated how teachers supported and encouraged the development of
traditionally masculine approaches to their disciplines (science and math, respectively) in
which decontextualized logic and information are prized over metaphorical and narrative
approaches. According to Reichert and Kurilloff’s (2004) interview-based study of boys’
experiences in an all boys’ school, boys perceived the school to be complicit in the
hegemonic and class-based marginalization of students perceived to be outsiders through
what they describe as a “tacit, common curriculum for man-making” (p. 564), involving
specific rituals, rewards, policies and habits. The highly masculine environment did not
appear to improve marginalized boys’ connection to the school environment.
Sometimes male practices that appear at first to question hegemonic masculinities
can also be construed as reinforcing them. In Roulston and M ills’ (2000) case study of
two music teachers’ practices, male teachers manipulated gender boundaries so that boys
would feel that music could be considered masculine. In doing so, they deployed
traditional hegemonic masculinity as currency in increasing boys’ participation. One
teacher, for example, shamed boys into initially participating by suggesting that they
might be inferior to girls, an accusation the boys roundly denied. Then he created singing
practices reminiscent of sports coaching sessions, going so far as to “dress up” in a track
suit to construct these sessions as a “camaraderie of men” (p. 232). Another teacher used
his own knowledge and involvement in current popular music, emphasizing the aspects
2 5
boys in his classroom. However, the bands and the lyrics of the music used were
consistent with hegemonic masculinity. These practices effectively engaged boys in what
they had previously considered to be a feminized and proscribed activity, but they
reinforced the legitimacy of the boys’ perceptions of traditional male domination.
Male Teachers Engaging with Masculinity in the Classroom
In addition to studies examining the reproduction of hegemonic masculinity, some
studies have also described male teachers who employ other more transformative
approaches to facilitating curricular access for boys. Davies (1997) described an
alternative approach adopted by one teacher, who supported the possibility of different
masculinities within a classroom, and constructed literacy as compatible with all forms of
being masculine. He exhibited certain aspects of dominant masculinity but also
celebrated his own emotional response to experiences. He actively promoted
connectedness to both the natural world and the larger world of current events as aspects
of his practice. Browne and Fletcher’s (1995) anthology of reflective essays by
practicing teachers offers evidence that male teaching practice can employ masculine
resources in the interests of transformation. In this anthology, Littlewood’s essay, for
example, outlines ways in which his personal understanding of masculine hegemonic
interaction enabled him to assist a very aggressive and challenging group of boys to
reflect on their practices and attitudes in part by consistently modelling inclusive and
respectful interaction with them. Littlewood advocates using a more fine-grained
approach to curbing male students’ choice of content and response pattern, while
continuing to work at helping students to problematize ideologies of dominance (see also
being male in the classroom, one far greater than is suggested by feminist scholars such
as Grumet and Gilligan, or in research on the reproduction of dominant masculinities in
school settings (Connell, 2000; Mac an Ghaill, 1994, Reichert & Kuriloff, 2004). The
identity, perspectives and practices of the individual teacher, and the way in which he
positions himself within the gendered social context of the school and society, may have
far reaching consequences for the ways that students interact and position themselves
with regard to the curriculum.
Literacy: Towards a Definition
Alloway, Freebody, Gilbert and Muspratt (2002) define literacy as mastery of the
system of spoken and written language, print and media culture. They identify four key
sets of practices: code breaking, meaning making, text use, and text analysis. They also
state that in different places and times “what counts as literacy” may be different, as
“selective traditions of literacy can come to count as literacy-for-that-culture, while
others... come to be allocated elsewhere in the institution of schooling or outside of it, or
simply fail to appear in the public and private activities of the culture” (p. 32). This
notion of social constructions of valued literacy is also supported by Gee (1999) who
argues that literacy instruction privileges specific values and ways of constructing
narratives and knowledge, which may impede marginalized groups’ participation in
school literacy (Gee, 1999). Any individual could be seen as the meeting point of “many,
sometimes conflicting socially and historically defined discourses” (Gee, 1992, p. 23) and
2 7
partial or problematic insertion into dominant discourses. One mediating characteristic in
these discourses may be gender.
Perceptions of Gender in Literacy Curricula
It is very common for boys and mainstream commentators to view Language Arts
curricula as feminized (Martino, 1995; Rowan, Knobel, Bigum, & Lankshear, 2002;
Rowe, 2000). Both boys and girls often position boys’ enjoyment of reading and writing
as effeminate (Hall & Coles, 1997; Martino, 1995; Millard, 1997; Sanderson, 1995).
According to Millard (1997) early experiences of gendered family reading patterns may
normalize gender differences, so that students and teachers arrive at school with certain
built in biases regarding gender appropriate practices of literacy.
Underlying ways that teachers and curricula conceive of and value emotion and
relationship in text response may privilege feminine patterns of social interaction,
including the conception of both reading and writing as self-exploratory and confessional,
the emphasis on pleasure in reading, rather than pragmatism, the emphasis on emotional
response, and the choice of literature based on its demonstration of characters’
psychological development (Davies, 1997; Millard, 1997; Newkirk, 2002). Boundaries
of school literacy deny many typical masculine literacy activities, including
technological, multimedia, and gaming related uses of literacy (Blair & Sanford, 2004),
as well as devaluing many topics and styles of writing that are popular with boys (Hall &
Coles, 1997; Kendrick & McKay, 2002; Newkirk, 2002). In his study of elementary aged
boys’ reading and writing, Newkirk (2002) argued that boys’ topical interests in reading
and writing often focus on types of humour, intertextual borrowings from popular culture,
disruptive, or disrespectful in classroom settings. Thus, potentially gender-mediated
factors such as the teachers’ attitudes towards discipline and authority, sense of propriety,
personal taste, and sense of humour may also play a role in the accessibility of literacy
for some boys.
Some studies indicate that engagement with literacy can become a component of
gender differentiation work among children, for example, by resisting literacy as a way of
asserting masculinity (Skelton, 2001). Davies (1997, 2003) described how boys
sexualized storytelling and response activities to silence female teachers’ and students’
attempts to question male dominance, and made homophobic remarks to police other
boys’ participation (See also Peyton Young, 2001).
Competitive intragroup hierarchies among boys can also be played out in literacy
practices (Blair & Sanford, 2004; Hall & Coles, 1997; Millard, 1997; Newkirk, 2002).
Gallas (1998) delineated the way that, among boys, delayed readers may be excluded
from social groups, and socially strong boys may intentionally elicit oral reading
performances from more socially isolated weak readers to reinforce their exclusion.
Alloway, Gilbert, Gilbert & Henderson (2003) found that in secondary English classes
providing “boy-friendly” oral work could effectively meet the needs o f hegemonically
masculine boys but disenfranchise other boys because of boundary policing and
surveillance practices by the more dominant male students. Smith and Wilhelm (2002,
2004) found that boys in their study more typically avoided literacy because they found
potential failure threatening, rather than because they viewed literacy as feminine.
2 9
terms of their relationship to femininity and in terms of their relationships with other
boys.
The Teacher’s Role in Boys’ Literacy
In addressing the sociocultural issues considered in the previous section, Alloway
et al. (2002) examined teachers’ interventions in boys’ literacy practices in schools in
terms of their contributions to three repertoires of practice, three “orchestrated set of
capabilities and dispositions for acting purposefully in the world” (p. 127). These
repertoires include sets of management procedures, reasoning practices, and shared
norms. Specifically, they identified three kinds of repertoires whose wider development
was seen by teachers as key to advancing boys’ literacy achievement: repertoires for
representing the self, for relating to others and to the work of the classroom, and for
negotiating with the culture beyond the classroom. This culture beyond the classroom
includes the “hypermasculine world” and what it means “to be male in such a world, and
the meanings and ways of being constructed in such a world” (p. 128). Though Alloway
et al.’s study does not make reference to teachers’ gender, engaging in this sociocultural
work with boys could be profoundly influenced by one’s knowledge of and credibility
within the masculine social and academic landscape (See Martino (1995) and Mills
(2000)). A review of effective practices in British schools with small gender gaps in
literacy achievement identified the conscious development of a “non-macho” masculine
culture, including (but not exclusive to) the presence of non-macho but highly literate
male teachers, and the involvement of older boys as role models for literacy practices
among younger boys (Daly, 2003; OFSTED, 2003). These practices suggest that teacher
How different men experienced literacy as boys, whether they found it appealing,
difficult, easy, socially problematic, or simply unengaging can shape their notions of
literacy and what students need in significant ways. Though very little research offers
insight into the literacy practices or thinking of male teachers, Booth’s (2005)
observations about male education students’ self-perceptions as non-readers because of
distorted definitions of what constituted “real” reading offer the important possibility that
male teachers’ personal literacy histories may have consequences for their practices of
literacy instruction. Goodwyn (2002) identifies secondary pre-service English teachers’
normalizing assumptions around the love of reading as having a potentially distorting
effect on the learning opportunities of those who do not share their perspective, an
observation also at the root of Newkirk’s (2002) attempts to articulate what it is to be a
non-reader for his highly literate teacher audience. As with the issue of male role
models, a more nuanced understanding of the multiple ways men enact literacy, and the
role that their understanding and access to discourses of masculinity might be playing in
those practices, seems vital to understanding the role of gender in literacy pedagogy.
Summary
Gender performance involves the formulation and enactment of specific
discourses and practices by individuals, as well as negotiations of these relations in social
contexts. Gender plays a key role in the construction of what is possible and necessary
for us and others, and of what we consider to be our position vis a vis others in society.
To a great extent personal histories, infused with gendered experience, will tend to shape
what individuals understand to be the needs and range of options available to them and to
31
historical institutional understandings of what is normal and natural, also shape the kinds
of labour, interactions, and roles available and expected of both men and women. But
men and women may be complicit, resistant, or ambivalent towards these roles, and may
also demonstrate a range of understandings regarding the effects of such gender
arrangements within schools.
Gender in literacy instruction requires further exploration on a number of levels.
At a conceptual level there is the issue of whether the male teacher’s experience of
dominant discourses of literacy is different from that of female teachers. The position of
the male teacher with regard to a curriculum that is often viewed as feminized by students
and society, and whether there are ways in which the curriculum is actually gendered,
may also play an important role. The teacher’s capacity to position himself in the
gendered student social network of his classroom, and the processes he uses to do that,
may play a role in the way that students access the curriculum or see themselves as able
or not able to take risks, to feel safe, or to succeed in the classroom. It is possible that the
role of the male teacher, as distinct from the predominantly female culture of elementary
schools, may be a location of possibilities for children, but there is also the risk of
reconstructing hegemonic masculinity in counterproductive ways. The complex and
contradictory ways in which male teachers’ gendered identity is perceived within the
layers of their classroom, school, and social environments, and the ways in which this
experience is in turn shaped by their personal histories and understanding of the needs of
boys in becoming literate men, require close scrutiny if we are to begin to get a clearer
Research Questions
This study explores the following questions:
How does gendered life experience inform these teachers’ understanding of boys’ needs in elementary classrooms and the teachers’ practices in meeting those needs?
How did being male affect the literacy history of these teachers? W hat influence have these histories had on their literacy teaching?
Definition of Terms
Discourse: a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking
and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful
group or “social network” (Gee, 1992). A discourse is ideological, in that it privileges a
specific set of values and viewpoints in terms of which one must speak and act, and
which are generally defined in opposition to other, opposing discourses. The production
and control of discourses is related to the distribution of social power and the hierarchical
structure of society, and may lead to the acquisition of social goods in a society (Gee,
1999).
Gender: the structure of social relations that centres on the reproductive arena, and the
set of practices (governed by this structure) that bring reproductive distinctions between
female/male bodies into social processes feminine/masculine. Gender patterns may vary
from one cultural context to another. Gender arrangements are socially reproduced by
the power of structures to delimit individual action so that they often appear natural and
unchanging, but they are always changing as human activity produces new situations and
structural imperatives. (Connell, 2002, p. 10)
Literacy: Literacy is the mastery of a variety of forms of communication, including the
operating within this framework, this study focuses primarily on reading and writing as
key components of how literacy is envisioned, practiced, and valued within schools.
Masculinity: a concept that names patterns of gender practice as related, generally, to
practices typical of men. Masculinity is relational, in that it does not exist except by
contrast to femininity. Practices perceived as masculine are not solely enacted by male
bodies. However, the focus of this study, on men and boys, means that my use of the
term tends generally to examine the embodied social experiences of males. Although all
men engage in masculine social practices, I am borrowing from Connell’s (1990, 1995,
2000) framework of masculinities which indicates that males participate in forms of
masculinity that are hierarchically valued. Its instantiation by individuals is also
mediated by their negotiation of their own cultural spaces, as intersected, for example, by
race, class, and sexuality. In this study, the term “ways of being male” will be used
interchangeably with the term “masculinity” in order to encompass both the social
practices and embodied experiences of individuals living in male bodies.
Subject Position: A subject position is a location in a network of social relations into
which a person inserts him or herself, or is inserted by social forces. This position forms a
standpoint for his or her ethical disposition, activity, and knowledge formation, and can
involve taking up specific roles. Some subject positions have agency, while others may
constitute a person as an ‘outsider’ without a voice (Blunden, 2005).
Significance of Study
This study offers an opportunity for teachers to reflect on their teaching practices
around boys in schools, which may lead to more nuanced and reflective practice in the
schools, this study may offer participants the opportunity to see their own gendered
practice more clearly, and to examine the social and personal assumptions that surround
these debates more critically.
This study provides insights into a repertoire of ideas and practices that can
support boys' learning. It also provides data regarding the perceptions of men in schools
and the practice of same- and cross-gender teaching that will assist teachers and
administrators in offering more equitable access to the curriculum. For policy makers,
the study provides a more robust understanding of the roles men play in schools, as well
as the opportunity to develop more critical and complex approaches to the issues of boys’
learning in schools. For researchers, it contributes to the body of literature regarding
male teaching practices. This is of particular value at the current time, when data
regarding boys’ achievement in schools is both highly contentious and problematic to
3 5
CHAPTER III
DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
This chapter outlines the design of the study, the analytical framework, and the
steps taken to ensure the validity of the study. It also provides a participant summary and
brief observations concerning participants’ practices during interviews.
Design and Procedure
This is a qualitative research study employing narrative inquiry methods. The
interpretive stage is also informed by critical discourse analysis (CDA) and ethnographic
methods. Data collection included reflective journal entries and two sets of transcribed,
semi-structured interviews supported by field notes.
I have chosen to explore my research questions through qualitative methods
because of the nature of those questions, which emphasize the effects of the nuanced
particularities of individuals’ gendered experiences. Employing a qualitative
methodology enabled me to gain insight into the idiosyncratic ways that the participants
understand, take up, and leave aside aspects of their experience in working with boys,
offering a counterpoint to the kinds of statistical analyses of gender effects that form such
a significant component of research into boys’ learning. As Grumet (1991) said in
reference to narrative research, it is a kind of research that foregrounds “the spontaneity,
complexity and ambiguity of experience” (p. 67).
Procedure
Application was made to the Research Ethics Board at the University of W indsor
outlining the intent of the study. A letter of information and permission to conduct